|
86%
|
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
|
"Happily, there's a good deal of fun if you like things crashing violently into each other and out of warp-drive at regular intervals."
|
Bob Mondello
|
|
77%
|
Pieta (2013)
|
"Kim offers no easy answers, and never backs away from the toughness of the questions, in a film that's ugly in both its material and its presentation."
|
Keith Phipps
|
|
——
|
Re-emerging: The Jews Of Nigeria (2013)
|
"Re-emerging speaks for itself as an uplifting portrait of an exuberant subculture that doesn't just practice its faith - it revels in it."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
77%
|
Augustine (2013)
|
"Visually, the film conjures the past with shadowy interiors and harsh light. Winocour, who also scripted, often makes her points without words."
|
Mark Jenkins
|
|
91%
|
Frances Ha (2013)
|
"There's a touch of Gracie Allen in Frances, an indomitable blithe spirit who lives happily within a bubble-world of her own construction."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
75%
|
Bidder 70 (2013)
|
"Seems designed primarily for teach-ins and rallies."
|
Mark Jenkins
|
|
96%
|
Stories We Tell (2013)
|
"An exercise in family navel-gazing becomes something more meta - less about the stories themselves than about the often uproarious ways in which people tell stories."
|
Bob Mondello
|
|
50%
|
The Great Gatsby (2013)
|
"Luhrmann takes great care with the rhythms of individual scenes, yet the film as a whole plays like a long trudge through a familiar story."
|
Keith Phipps
|
|
82%
|
Sightseers (2013)
|
"It may be the satirist's credo to spare no one, but in Sightseers, no one is spared Wheatley's smug superiority."
|
Scott Tobias
|
|
83%
|
Venus And Serena (2013)
|
"Lively if slightly worshipful ..."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
85%
|
What Maisie Knew (2013)
|
"The film raises more uncomfortable questions about Maisie's uncertain future than it ever answers, but that's in keeping with the emotional honesty the filmmakers are striving for."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
67%
|
Greetings From Tim Buckley (2013)
|
"What redeems the film, ultimately, are Jeff's poignant efforts to unburden himself of his father's oppressive legacy and stand on his own merits."
|
Scott Tobias
|
|
51%
|
Post Tenebras Lux (2013)
|
"It's as if Reygadas started with a sprawling cache of visual ideas and then tried to find some way to organize them all. The effect can be frustrating at times, but also surprising and beguiling."
|
Scott Tobias
|
|
78%
|
Iron Man 3 (2013)
|
"Snappy dialogue, momentarily startling plot twists and lots of stuff blowing up."
|
Bob Mondello
|
|
84%
|
Something in the Air (2013)
|
"Viewers who didn't live through the period may not find them evocative. But this movie is about the choices that turn children into adults, and the attempt to balance conflicting enthusiasms."
|
Mark Jenkins
|
|
73%
|
Love Is All You Need (2013)
|
"Two troubled souls struggle with obstreperous relatives and a bundle of unresolved life issues apparently snatched from the nearest airport bookstore."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
100%
|
Portrait of Jason (1967)
|
"Whether Jason is laughing or crying, he holds you rapt with tales that conceal as much as they reveal."
|
John Powers
|
|
62%
|
Paradise: Love (2013)
|
"Paradise: Love is startlingly frank if narratively underdeveloped."
|
Mark Jenkins
|
|
81%
|
Kon Tiki (2013)
|
"A rousing and thoroughly enjoyable Old Hollywood-style adventure."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
46%
|
Pain & Gain (2013)
|
"[Bay] blankets the film in a tone of smug self-awareness that obscures everything but its bald hypocrisy."
|
Scott Tobias
|
|
8%
|
The Big Wedding (2013)
|
"The quiet moments feel just as contrived as the manic flailing that repeatedly sends characters tumbling into swimming pools and other bodies of water."
|
Keith Phipps
|
|
24%
|
Arthur Newman (2013)
|
"Arthur Newman fails to finesse an essential problem: how to make a boring man interesting."
|
Mark Jenkins
|
|
54%
|
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2013)
|
"The Reluctant Fundamentalist collapses in a heap of wool-gathering humanism that feels warm to the touch, yet fatally hedges its political bets."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
52%
|
At Any Price (2013)
|
"At Any Price is about the slow, insidious corruption of a regular guy, about the rot that grows around him and within him, allowing him to become complicit in a crime of biblical proportions."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
88%
|
In the House (2013)
|
"Ozon keeps sliding between genres ("Now we are in bad farce," scolds the teacher) to explore what really interests him - the creative process itself."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
88%
|
Herman's House (2013)
|
"The contrasting demeanors of its two main characters give Herman's House its spark, but the movie has some pungent moments without them."
|
Mark Jenkins
|
|
55%
|
Oblivion (2013)
|
"Kosinski's personal commitment to gorgeous artifice above all other considerations only harms the film so much."
|
Scott Tobias
|
|
57%
|
Unmade In China (2013)
|
"Unmade in China is nominally about filmmaking, but what Kofman and Barklow do well is to use their unusual position within the Chinese state machine to make a thinly veiled movie about politics."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
67%
|
Disconnect (2013)
|
"Even in the heightened awareness of a post- age (and its ), Disconnect is naturally gripping."
|
Jeannette Catsoulis
|
|
90%
|
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay (2013)
|
"It's magic, pure and simple."
|
Bob Mondello
|
|
90%
|
Ain't In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm (2013)
|
"Despite his flashes of bitterness, the Helm captured here seems like a man at peace with where he ended up - however taxing the road that brought him, however many friends lost or discarded along the way."
|
Keith Phipps
|
|
77%
|
42 (2013)
|
"Shameless, sure. But effective."
|
Bob Mondello
|
|
65%
|
Antiviral (2013)
|
"Before long, the aggressive sleekness of Antiviral becomes its own kind of ennui."
|
Stephanie Zacharek
|
|
88%
|
The Angels' Share (2013)
|
"Graphically observant about the ease with which young men starved of opportunities can turn their energies inward to destroying themselves and one another."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
42%
|
To The Wonder (2013)
|
"Pretty but inert, To the Wonder is a vaporous mystery wrapped in a gauzy enigma - a cinematic riddle that'll appeal principally to those eager for another piece, however tiny, of the puzzle that is Terrence Malick."
|
Mark Jenkins
|
|
76%
|
It's a Disaster (2013)
|
"For most of the way, it's clever and smartly proportioned, with the action confined to one well-exploited location and gags about love, the curdling of long-term friendships and petty social mores popping off everywhere."
|
Scott Tobias
|
|
75%
|
Simon Killer (2013)
|
"The film is frequently masterful, suggesting the turbulent inner state of an American sociopath who believes himself to be a good guy."
|
Scott Tobias
|
|
55%
|
Down the Shore (2013)
|
"Gandolfini and Janssen dance a delicate minuet around one another, pacing out a slow, quiet revelation of the shared past that has paralyzed their wills to happiness and change."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
62%
|
Evil Dead (2013)
|
"This Evil Dead is polished and meticulously planned, and it benefits from the attention to detail as well as from Alvarez's obvious love for the spirit of the source material."
|
Ian Buckwalter
|
|
27%
|
The Brass Teapot (2013)
|
"The Brass Teapot too often devolves into stale slapstick ..."
|
Stephanie Zacharek
|
|
77%
|
André Gregory: Before and After Dinner (2013)
|
"For all its suggestive title, Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner is less a sequel to My Dinner with Andre than an update from the orchestra seats."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
68%
|
Trance (2013)
|
"Boyle may be sleepwalking - speed-sleepwalking, maybe - through Trance. But he's awake and alive when it comes to knowing what his actors can do."
|
Stephanie Zacharek
|
|
55%
|
The Company You Keep (2013)
|
"It's a pleasure to watch, even if the payoff is rather less substantial than the backstory."
|
Joel Arnold
|
|
70%
|
Wrong (2013)
|
"In Wrong, reality and the world of the film will regularly upend themselves; it's never quite reliably clear, though, that these inexplicable events are happening for a purpose."
|
Joel Arnold
|
|
77%
|
Renoir (2013)
|
"The performances are assured, the ambiance impeccable and the themes resonant."
|
Mark Jenkins
|
|
96%
|
Blancanieves (2013)
|
"A grotesquely beautiful new take on the Snow White fable by Spanish writer-director Pablo Berger."
|
Ella Taylor
|
|
28%
|
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
|
"What's the difference between an action figure and an action star? Very little in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which features no performances of note, even from such combat-tested thespians as Bruce Willis, Jonathan Pryce and Dwayne Johnson."
|
Mark Jenkins
|
|
65%
|
Starbuck (2013)
|
"Director Ken Scott, who also cowrote the script with Martin Petit, has fashioned a story that starts out low-key and gradually builds in its emotional expansiveness."
|
Stephanie Zacharek
|
|
94%
|
Room 237 (2013)
|
"A thrilling testament to the fact that art is - and should be - open to interpretation."
|
Scott Tobias
|
|
69%
|
The Croods (2013)
|
"As family viewing, it's pleasant enough: primitive, yes, but in a digitally sophisticated way that's boisterous, funny and will no doubt sell a lot of toys."
|
Bob Mondello
|
76%
29%
83%
85%
45%
40%
